archive

Falling for you, Mac

To my new found love: Your features are perfect, your curves superb. With each day I discover new things about you, and fall further for your intelligent design. Why, I ask, didn’t we meet sooner?

Hold on, folks. No, this is certainly not an offensively sappy and belated Valentine Day’s wish. This is about true, lasting love. And such, I proclaim to the world: I love you, MacBook.

PC, may you rest in peace. With your broken LCD transformer (or whatever the OIT service guy called it), and your out of the question repair price, you bit the dust.

The MacBook arrived only one and a half weeks ago, and I have officially become a full-fledged Mac fanatic. With Steve Jobs leading the mission, boastful Mac-owners being the missionaries, and Apple the new religion, I am the latest convert. The time is finally here.

The time couldn’t have come soon enough. It was horrifying to leave OIT with half of my laptop: they had removed my broken screen and I had decided repairing it would take too long and be too much.

The search began for a replacement, and PC, you didn’t stand a chance. With the recommendations of friends ringing loud in the back of my head, Apple lured me in swift and fast. And, then, of course, the wait. And more waiting. (Side note: once an item is shipped, you can’t call in and upgrade from ground to overnight service. Just an FYI.)

Let me tell you, the two-week interim between the death of the laptop PC and the arrival of the Mac was not easy. It was an anxious time, filled with countless visits to the ever-bustling LaFun cluster, the CoMo lab, and anyplace on campus where computers are available. I think the CoMo cluster supervisors know me by face, now. (Yes, it’s me, that kid who planted himself in the lab for hours on end.)

During the wait, Facebook – and partner in crime AOL – finally took a second seat to homework as I was forced to budget my time (I wanted to spend as little time as possible in the computer lab. They already knew my face. That’s about as personal as I wanted to get.).

I think, in fact, that my Facebook addiction took a hit while I was forced to do my computing on public computers. No longer do I feel the same urges to compulsively check my wall or update my status after having reduced access for almost two weeks.

In addition to restoring the my ability to browse Facebook endlessly, this Mac has brought fewer computer glitches, faster work, and an array of fun new features that would never grace the desktop of my old PC.

Taking into account the circumstance, perhaps my affection for this new Mac is based more on the relief it brought to my juggling of work between trips to various clusters rather than its extraordinary quality. Perhaps I would feel the same about any new computer after two weeks without one.